Guides:Avatar Performance Ranking

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Introduction

VRChat uses several systems to help manage performance and safety within the platform. Avatar Performance Ranks are one of these systems and are used to communicate how resource intensive an avatar is.

Performance Ranks

Ranks range from Very Poor to Excellent, based on avatar complexity and resource usage in-game.

Avatar Performance Ranks

Rank	Icon	Meaning
Excellent		Highly optimized avatars with minimal impact on performance.
Good		Well optimized avatars that are generally safe for most users.
Medium		Acceptable avatars that may cause minor performance impact.
Poor		Avatars with noticeable performance impact, especially on lower-end systems.
Very Poor		Avatars that significantly exceed performance limits and are hidden by default safety settings unless manually shown.

Avatar Metrics

VRChat has a unique avatar metric system that outlines the performance of each avatar. An avatar's metrics are the main measurement for your Avatar's Performance Rank. These metrics measure how resource-intensive your avatar is. The more demanding the metrics are, the lower your avatar will be ranked. Lower ranks affect avatar visibility, performance, and the experience of other users.

Metric Elements

• Triangles: These measure how complex your avatar's geometry is. A triangle count of an avatar is the number of tiny triangles that make up an avatar's 3D shape.
• Bounds Size: The total size of the avatar. This can be very large if a user has large animation on the avatar, even if it isn't showing all the time. (Note Bounds Size will not cause the avatar to be blocked, even if it is below the "Minimum Displayed Performance Rank" setting)
• Texture Memory: The amount of memory estimated to be in use by the avatar's textures. These textures occupy space in both system RAM and in the video card's memory.
• Skinned Meshes: The number of Skinned Mesh Renderer components on the avatar.
• Basic Meshes: The number of (non-skinned) Mesh Renderer components on the avatar.
• Material Slots: The number of material slots on the avatar. Material slots are the slots on the mesh where you fit materials in.
• PhysBone Components: The number of PhysBone components on the avatar.
• PhysBone Affected Transforms: The total number of transforms affected by PhysBones components on the avatar.
• PhysBone Colliders: The number of PhysBone collider scripts on the avatar.
• PhysBone Collision Check Count: The sum of how many PhysBone transforms each collider can affect. This can count transforms twice or more, because a single transform can be affected by multiple colliders.
• Contacts: The number of Contacts on the avatar.
• Constraint Count: The total number of VRChat constraints and Unity constraints on the avatar.
• Constraint Depth: The deepest chain of dependencies across all constraints on the avatar. (See here for more information)
• Animators: The number of Animators on the avatar.
• Bones: The number of Bones in the avatar's rig.
• Lights: The number of Light components on the avatar.
• Particle Systems: The number of Particle System components on the avatar.
• Total Particles Active: The sum of maxParticles across all particle systems on the avatar.
• Mesh Particle Active Polys: The total number of triangles of Mesh Particles emitted by Particle Systems that are active.
• Particle Trails Enabled: If any Particle Systems on the avatar have Particle Trails enabled, this will be True.
• Particle Collision Enabled: If any Particle Systems on the avatar have Particle Collision enabled, this will be True.
• Trail Renderers: The number of Trail Renderers on the avatar.
• Line Renderers: The number of Line Renderers on the avatar.
• Cloths: The total number of Cloth components on the avatar.

Note all GameObjects and Components, including those that are currently disabled, count towards the Avatar Performace Rank.

Note if Mesh Read/Write on any mesh on the avatar (including particle systems), the "Triangles" count will read "Mesh Read/Write Disabled" and the avatar's Performance Rank will be immediately downgraded to "Very Poor" regardless of the actual triangle count on the avatar.

Rank Thresholds on PC

The below table shows the maximum value of each metric for each performance rank on PC.

Rank Thresholds on PC

Rank	Excellent	Good	Medium	Poor
Triangles	32,000	70,000	70,000	70,000
Bounds Size	2.5m x 2.5m x 2.5m	4m x 4m x 4m	5m x 6m x 5m	5m x 6m x 5m
Texture Memory	40 MB	75 MB	110 MB	150 MB
Skinned Meshes	1	2	8	16
Basic Meshes	4	8	16	24
Material Slots	4	8	16	32
PhysBone Components	4	8	16	32
PhysBone Affected Transforms	16	64	128	256
PhysBone Colliders	4	8	16	32
PhysBone Collision Check Count	32	128	256	512
Contacts	8	16	24	32
Constraint Count	100	250	300	350
Constraint Depth	20	50	80	100
Animators	1	4	16	32
Bones	75	150	256	400
Lights	0	0	0	1
Particle Systems	0	4	8	16
Total Particles Active	0	300	1000	2500
Total Particle Active Polys	0	1000	2000	5000
Particle Trails Enabled	False	False	True	True
Particle Collision Enabled	False	False	True	True
Trail Renderers	1	2	4	8
Line Renderers	1	2	4	8
Cloths	0	1	1	1
Total Cloth Vertices	0	50	100	200
Physics Colliders	0	1	8	8
Physics Rigidbodies	0	1	8	8
Audio Sources	1	4	8	8
Raycasts	1	2	5	9

Rank Thresholds on Mobile

This includes VRChat running on Android, IOS, and Meta Quest. Avatar Rank thresholds are stricter than on PC.

The below table shows the maximum value of each metric for each performance rank on Mobile.

Rank Thresholds on Mobile

Rank	Excellent	Good	Medium	Poor
Triangles	7,500	10,000	15,000	20,000
Bounds Size	2.5m x 2.5m x 2.5m	4m x 4m x 4m	5m x 6m x 5m	5m x 6m x 5m
Texture Memory	10 MB	18 MB	25 MB	40 MB
Skinned Meshes	1	1	2	2
Basic Meshes	1	1	2	2
Material Slots	1	1	2	4
PhysBone Components	0	4	6	8
PhysBone Affected Transforms	0	16	32	64
PhysBone Colliders	0	4	8	16
PhysBone Collision Check Count	0	16	32	64
Contacts	2	4	8	16
Constraint Count	30	60	120	150
Constraint Depth	5	15	35	50
Animators	1	1	1	2
Bones	75	90	150	150
Particle Systems	0	0	0	2
Total Particles Active	0	0	0	200
Total Particle Active Polys	0	0	0	400
Particle Trails Enabled	False	False	False	True
Particle Collision Enabled	False	False	False	True
Trail Renderers	0	0	0	1
Line Renderers	0	0	0	1
Raycasts	1	2	3	5

Lights, Cloths, Total Cloth Vertices, Physics Colliders, Physics Rigidobdies, and Audio Sources are not shown since they can never appear on avatars.

If the Very Poor value is exceeded on mobile, no matter the current "Show Avatar" state of the avatar, all PhysBones, Contacts, and VRChat Constraints on the avatar will be removed.

Optimization Tips (Per Metric)

Polygons

Use decimation tools in Blender or Unity to reduce triangle counts. Avoid higher-poly accessories if possible. Combine meshes when possible.

Materials

Merge materials using texture atlases and tools available in Unity. Fewer materials = fewer draw calls, which improves render speed.

Textures

Compress textures (make smaller size, less detail) when possible. It is recommended to use formats like JPEG or WebP for lightweight assets. Use 1024x1024 or lower if possible.

PhysBones (Dynamic Bones)

If using Dynamic Bones (an older system), switch to PhysBones. Limit bone chains, colliders, and detail. Use bone filters to exclude unnecessary movements, and reduce bugs.

Meshes (Skinned)

Combine skinned meshes in Unity using tools like Mesh Baker, or available 3rd party software. Avoid separate meshes for small accessories if possible.

Audio Sources

Use one audio source per avatar if possible. Avoid looping audios, or higher-bitrate audio unless absolutely essential.

Real-Time Lights

Avoid real-time lights at all possibilities. Instead, bake the lighting into textures or use emissive materials.

Shaders

Use lower-intensive shaders (like VRChat's Mobile shaders). Avoid transparency, animation, or multi-pass effects unless they are optimized and minimal. Use

It is possible to view your current avatar metrics from the VRChat avatars menu as well as inside the VRChat SDK in Unity. Useful to identify possible avatar bottlenecks, and to know where adjustments need to be made if necessary.

Frame time context

At 90 fps the total frame time budget is roughly 11 ms; at 60 fps it is roughly 16 ms. Community benchmarks provide approximate per-component costs measured on mid-to-high-end hardware (see Community:VRChat Performance Benchmarks for full methodology). Key results relevant to performance ranking include:

Component	Approximate cost
Animator layer (basic 2-state toggle)	~0.01 ms per layer (quadratic scaling with layer count)
Direct Blend Tree toggle	~75% less frame time than equivalent layer toggles
PhysBone transforms	~0.66 ms per 1000 affected transforms
VRC Constraints	~0.25 ms per 1000 active constraints (increases with depth)
Unity Constraints (auto-converted)	~0.75 ms per 1000 (native VRC Constraints recommended)
Contact Senders/Receivers	~0.5-0.75 ms per 1000, depending on toggling activity
Draw calls (material slots × meshes)	~2 ms per 1000 draw calls
Cloth vertices	~0.2 ms per 1000 vertices (up to ~200k)
Bones on Skinned Mesh Renderers	~0.32 ms per 1000 bones (while moving)

State behaviors on any layer of any controller increase the runtime of all controllers on that avatar by roughly 50%. Since the default Action and Gesture layers use state behaviors, this cost is typically always present.

Related Systems

• Avatar Dynamics

• Trust and Safety System

• Avatar Size Limits

• Avatar Components

• Avatar Fallback System

Official resources

• Avatar Performance Ranking System on Creator Docs
• Avatar Optimization Tips on Creator Docs

References

• VRC School: Unity/VRChat Performance Benchmarks
• UnityBenchmark on GitHub (data generation tool)